Saturday, October 03, 2009

Cuenca Try Number 2

Up about 8:00, Lisa and me walked around looking for someplace to have breakfast. Lisa bought a couple of newpapers to see what she could find out about the road closures and protests. Over breakfast, Lisa read the papers. There's numerous road closures around Ecuador (including the one we were on), but the paper didn't mention anything about anyone being shot yesterday. One person did die (and numerous injured) last Wednesday at a different road block, and the worst of it was happening on the road between Puyo and Macas, where indigineous people have blocked 3km of the highway by covering it in rocks, dirt and trees. That would explain all the riot police Lisa and Jason saw in Puyo on their bike ride. Apparently the indigineous people are very upset, and are talking war, they have tied red ribbons to their spears.We headed to the bus station and inquired about getting to Cuenca again. The road is still closed, but they said the best way would to take a bus towards Guayaquil, and get off at km26, stand by the side of the highway and wait for a bus going to Cuenca. It would be an extra 2 hours (at least) on the bus trip, but we decided to do it.The bus left at 10:30. Beautiful scenery, the highway snakes along the edge of the mountains. As we were going through the mountains, the bus suddenly stopped. The local woman beside me stood up, said something to me in Spanish, with an upset look, and slapped her hand on her leg, in frustration. I said, "No hablo espaƱol" and looked at Lisa, who asked her. Road block!!!!Fortunately, this road block was just construction and we were on our way within 20 minutes. There were lots of more stops for construction. Of course, all the hawkers know where the stops are, so when we pull up to one, they all flock onto the bus, selling water, juice, bananas, ice cream, chocolate and various other snacks. At some stops, locals have even setup little BBQ's, and are selling BBQ meat on a stick.When we came out of the mountains to the plains, it got very hot, lots and lots of banana plantations and some huge Dole factories.At km26, we got off, and waited by the side of the road. I'm sure all the locals were wondering what the heck these two whities were doing here, standing on the side of the highway. Haha.We waited about 20 minutes, and a bus for Cuenca came by, we flagged it down, and it stopped for us. We were soon climbing the mountains again, road stops periodically for construction. They are upgrading all their highways right now, so much construction.The highway passes through Parque Nacional Cajas, and it's beautiful, very high, ragged mountains and lakes, with most of the park at an elevation greater than 4000 metres.We finally got to Cuenca about 7:00pm.When we got off the bus, a local sold us on his hostal, Casa Sol, for $6 each, including breakfast. It ended up being a big dive.We went to Cafe Eucalyptus for an awesome supper, on the way back, we ran into a big fiesta outside Santa Domingo church, lots of people, dancing, tons of fireworks, a priest was the DJ, and he was a dance king too, picking randoms (both locals and tourists) out of the crowd and dancing with them. It was hilrious. They also had this huge, 30 foot structure made of bamboo. It was also covered in firecrackers and fireworks. Near the end, they lit it on fire. Now, there are no safety laws or anything here, and we were about 10 feet away from this structure. As soon as they lit it on fire, sparks and booms and smoke was everywhere, everyone got scared and started to back up. I was scared! Fireworks started shooting off this thing in all directions, into the crowds, up in the air, into buildings (including the church), it was awesome bbut totally scary!After that, went back to the hostal and to bed.

No comments:

Post a Comment